MYSTERIOUS

UNDERGROUND VLADIVOSTOK

Vladivostok has no subway system, but the city's underground is just as interesting in it's own way. The city is like an iceberg, with the underwater (underground) is no less impressive than the surface.

A large part of the underground, this urban spawn, and the root system of the city, links to parts of the Vladivostok Fortress, built in the early 20th century. In addition to the forts and batteries scattered throughout the city, there are vaults, passageways, warehouses, etc. And the military construction continues further, on to the Voroshilov battery on Russian Island. The ground floor has been turned into a museum, dating back the 1930s, with a number of Pacific Fleet's "buried" objects to the 1970s.

The bomb shelter is yet another part of Vladivostok's underground. There are catacombs and, for strictly peaceful purposes, a tunnel named after Stalin connecting the 3rd Rabochy and Lugovoy areas (originally also built for the military as a cover for Pacific Fleet railway batteries), underground water reservoirs, drainage channels, etc.

One of the most interesting underground places is Vladivostok-2. This bomb shelter, evacuation system, and simultaneous back-up control center for Primorye was set up in the early 1940s in the city's center (near the Gorky Theater). The underground passages connected shelter-seekers from the regional committee for the All Union Communist Party, NKVD leaders, and the Zolotoy Rog docks.

Visitors to Vladivostok's underground areas include activists, and the Vladivostok Digger Club, who have long been involved in the professional study of this urban sanctuary's subsoil. Today the club is not just for excursions and local history, but also for public control of historical and cultural monuments. The Diggers have even rescued a few such monuments from destruction.

Vladivostok's underground has inspired many legends. The most famous one is about an underwater tunnel on Russian Island, which supposedly separates into two cargo trucks. Experts from time to time debunk these myths, yet they live on. And so they should: with legends it is more interesting.